Winner of the 2021 Contest in Prose. Read judge Cristina Rivera Garza’s blurb here.
Some Humanity Still
In Wyoming, the boyfriend dresses like a wolf. I say to him, if you are a predator, better yet to choose a mountain lion or to clothe yourself in your own skin. No one knows wolves here anymore, except as something to be shot. The boyfriend knows all this but doesn't care; he runs around the pastures, and the cattle scatter like leaves. The head of a wolf is long and pointed, teeth peeking through gray lips. His eyes are yellow, his coat dappled gray and white. I read of how wolves are important to ecosystems two states over, cause trophic cascades when removed, but in Wyoming, a woman tells me that introducing wolves to Yellowstone was the biggest mistake they'd made.
The boyfriend is not so smart but neither is he dumb. He dresses as a wolf to irritate, to antagonize, and if he is shot, so be it. That's exactly what he wants, to prove something to somebody. He's like the magpie pulling the eagle's tail, pulling and pulling, trying to make something happen.
The boyfriend and I haven't been on the best of terms. If he is a wolf, I am a bobcat. He's showy, aggressive; I'm sneaky and cautious. We respect one another, but we just can't seem to get along. But he's the one who was here first, raised here before he met me. Our spaces overlap. He will take the sheets from the bed, and I will steal his pillow in retaliation. In our waking lives, he sits on his side of the house and I sit in mine; we rarely speak.
This isn't the way it's always been. We used to cozy up by the fireplace, place our feet in each other's laps. Watch the snow falling outside as we shared a blanket on the couch. But things have changed. Maybe it's the time that has passed by, each of us yearning for something different. Maybe it's something innate in his personality or in mine.
I find myself skittish around him. He shuts himself off, drives far away for hours, sometimes all night. Our freezer is filled with roadkill: porcupine, rabbit, raccoon, once, a doe. He will eat the meat barely singed, almost raw. When the boyfriend put on the wolf costume, I thought, aha, so that's who he is, like a light bulb finally turning on.
Now that he is a wolf, he stays away even longer. I occasionally catch glimpses of him when I drive on the gravel-covered county road, past the pastures of our neighbors. I have warned them that he is the boyfriend and not a true wolf, although he scares the black Angus cattle the same way a wolf does. I tell them he means no harm, he's just having a crisis of the spirit. They nod, but I don't know how long their patience will last. Plus, I'm the different one. I'm the one they don't trust. When he returns, his hands and feet are bloody, the nails filled with the dry dirt of these hills. Ticks nestle in his hair and on his pelt. He eschews any help, but the sigh he makes as he enters the tub makes me think there's some humanity in him still.
"I've seen this happen before," a neighbor tells me. "Gotta do something before things go too far." He gives me side-eye but I ignore him. It's not my job to fix the boyfriend. I'm the one who has to live here. Hunting season, though, is drawing near.
Trouble comes, as I knew it would. A calf savaged, hurt but not killed. The chase, that's what he's looking for, an excuse to play the martyr, the fugitive, as though he's done no wrong. I can't help him feeling his lack of choices, of having hit a dead end. But there was choice involved at some point. If a wolf is what he wants to be, so be it. In a place where there are only five people per square mile, things happen, people change to match their landscape. But he'll be the one to face the consequences.
There's always been a restlessness to the boyfriend, I tell the neighbors, but they're not interested in what I have to say. They think I've driven him to it, the interloper, they've known him almost all his life. They don't see how he pushes things—the prankster who doesn't know when to stop, always seeing how much he can get away with. The neighbors have a meeting about him without me, but as I said, I'm sneaky. I know what's going on. They plan to catch him, tranquilize him, see how far gone he is. Maybe shoot him if it's too late. He's one of them, so they've decided he's under their jurisdiction. The moon is halfway full as it peers in through the windows of their houses and we all know what that means.
I know I'm fucked whether I do my part or don't. But I'll be the one to track him down first. Colder weather is coming. A glimpse of gray, tracks that aren’t wolf yet also aren’t human. I carry a tranquilizer dart gun; after three years, I know how to use it. When I catch him, I'll ask him: Man or wolf? I think I know what his answer will be—I'm not sure he has much of a choice now anyway. No one ever gets to choose who they are; one's path can easily turn out differently from the way you expected. But then again, who is he to choose for me? He's the one who brought me here.
So I bring out a calf, let it call for its mother. Wait for the moon to grow round. When he comes, I'll be the one to pull the trigger.